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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28084890">to the bone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_B/pseuds/Jo_B'>Jo_B</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Withdrawal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:16:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,119</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28084890</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_B/pseuds/Jo_B</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Reid?” Morgan’s voice is soft and considerate, and they might as well be on the jet back from some far-off city after some difficult case. “I know you didn’t call me tonight to stare at the wall.”</p><p>His head is splitting and his heart is pounding and this was a mistake, but his hands are tied. Morgan is looking at him like he just might break in half, and maybe he’s wrong, but maybe he’s right.</p><p>“What’s going on, man?”</p><p>//</p><p>A little post-Revelations storyline resolution. Or whatever.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Morgan &amp; Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia &amp; Spencer Reid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>121</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>to the bone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Don't really know how I feel about this lol. Started off with a tiny idea, clearly spent more energy on some sections than others, but it is what it is.</p><p>I switched between general time periods too but didn't bother to switch tenses bc that's truly my biggest weakness, pls let me know if anything doesn't make sense haha</p><p>I'm also horrendous at tagging and couldn't figure out a good summary for this one, so sorry in advance if this isn't what you thought it'd be! I accept feedback on that too lol, I stuck with FF.net exclusively for far too long.</p><p>Hope everyone's having a good week :^)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s the sensation of everything he has ever known, cared about, and worked so hard for, slipping through his outstretched fingers that jolts him awake this time. There’s that, plus its accompaniment: the echo of his hubris to think that he could live the life he created and go on unscathed. With everything he’s seen – it was always going to end up something like this. Wasn’t it?</p><p>It’s what he’s been telling himself.</p><p>It’s been eighteen hours since his latest last hit. Gideon has been gone from the Bureau and gone from the grid and gone from their lives for a week and a half, and it’s been eighteen hours and seventeen minutes since his latest last hit. Tonight isn’t the first night he’s sat up in bed and wondered what he’d think of him now, and if he’s honest, it won’t be the last. Regardless of exact circumstance, he’s always been a curious man.</p><p>A sigh, and he’s up again. He’s been biting his nails and picking at his skin every time he’s woken up, and what little blood has appeared on his knuckles is worth an idle acknowledgement and not much more. He’s already thrown up whatever he had left in him and spent another half hour dry heaving for added measure, every bit of him pulsing in the dark, and it might even scare him if it wasn’t the same predictable cycle. If he didn’t already know what was happening, why it was happening, and how he ended up here.</p><p>Of course he knows. He’s always known, but it never made it any better. He tells himself that this is the last time he’ll do this, that there’s something inherently different about this moment, but doubt is insidious the way it creeps up in his chest. The clock glows red into the room, and the night outside and all the empty space in his apartment are laughing at him.</p><p>It’s been eighteen hours and twenty-one minutes since his latest last hit.</p><p><em>Do you see what you’ve done to yourself?</em> And to think, he was once so wide-eyed and optimistic.</p><p>He reaches for his phone, flips it open, shut, open, shut, open, shut, open. The default screen is blue with a purple wave moving across it, and the light it gives off is bright and intrusive and it makes his head split down the middle. Shut.</p><p>The screen on the outside flickers for a moment, displaying the time and exactly zero new messages. Open. He has fourteen grainy pictures saved, a mix of infrequent nights out and the occasional case photo he forgot to delete. Shut. One minute later. No new messages. Open.</p><p>He has thirty-four contacts saved, each of his past and present team members, precincts and officials who once needed him here and there, and a few random Bureau members he spoke to when he first joined and not once after. Shut. Forty-five seconds later. No new messages. Open.</p><p>He stares at the screen until his eyes start to burn. The keys all make funny sounds when he presses them, with a little haptic feedback each time. The numbers themselves, that’s dual-tone multi-frequency signaling. Shut. Five minutes later. No new messages.</p><p>It’s been eighteen hours and twenty-nine minutes since his latest last hit. He’s fiddling with the buttons, the hinge, tap, tap, tapping on the outside screen, contemplative – indecisive until he isn’t.</p><p>Open.</p>
<hr/><p>Gideon helps him walk away from where he left Tobias Hankel’s body, slowly – because his right foot can’t exactly take his weight, and patiently – because his brain can’t exactly process that he’s alive and he’s moving and he’s leaving and he’s alive and he just died and came back and started to dig his own grave and killed Tobias Hankel and killed Tobias Hankel and killed Tobias Hankel, so his head swivels back, back, back to the spot where he might have been buried if the team were a just a little later. The walk from death to the car is hazy and if he didn’t know any better, he might think it isn’t real at all.</p><p>J.J. still looks about to cry, but she doesn’t quite yet. She hugs him again, squeezes him tight enough to hurt his ribs, and gently guides him so he’s leaning on her in the back seat, her fingers carding through his hair. Gideon is quiet, stoic, careful as he pulls away.</p><p>The planned destination was a hospital fifteen minutes away, but they’re on the state route shoulder in seven. He seizes in car and it is what it is. By the time he floats back to them, J.J. has him on his side and Gideon has the doors open to make room for his legs and Hotch is behind a light shining in his eyes and he, himself, is still alive and not dead.</p><p>“Reid? You back with us?” Hotch is saying, and even though Reid’s eyes darting around to find him isn’t much of an answer, he turns his head back. “I think he should be okay to move. He’ll probably wake up more in a few minutes. We’re almost there.”</p><p>Is it a blessing, a curse, or something in between that no one has checked his pocket? With his legs folded back as they were and his head resting heavily on J.J.’s leg and a quiet fall night flying by, he just breathes, breathes, breathes.</p>
<hr/><p>If the sight of Reid answering the door slick with sweat and visibly shaking is enough to give Morgan any pause, it doesn’t show. If the hour surprises him, that doesn’t show, either.</p><p>He stands in the hall with his hands in his pockets, comfortable, like he’s been here before and this isn’t a first for either of them: a pillar in the sea.</p><p>Reid’s first thought is that this was a mistake.</p><p>“Hey,” Morgan starts. A pause stretches out for a moment, and Reid just stares and stares until Morgan hits him with a careful smile. “Can I come in, or did you call me to stand in the hallway?”</p><p>“Uh – yeah,” he starts, stepping away from the door, but pauses once he’s in. “Actually, I – I’m sorry, the… more I think about it, the more I think it can wait. I’m sorry. It can wait until morning, or Monday, I didn’t mean to –”</p><p>“Well, I’m already here, might as well tell me what it is. I was already up.”</p><p>“It’s two in the morning.”</p><p>“On a <em>Friday, </em>Pretty Boy, on a Friday. What I do in <em>my</em> free time…” he takes a moment to sit down, take off his shoes, familiar. “That’s my business.”</p><p>Reid’s second thought is also that this was a mistake.</p><p>Even so, he slowly comes around to sit across from Morgan, feeling his eyes on him as he goes, razor sharp. The way his hands are still shaking, every bead of sweat on his forehead, the hunched-over posture and crossed arms that scream discomfort, a desire for distance and space, they’re all so clearly begging to be read by someone who knows the language.</p><p>He is out in <em>display, </em>and he hates it. But he asked for this, didn’t he? He tied his own hands.</p><p>“Have you heard of the term, ‘hyperbolic discounting?’” he starts. “It’s one of the cornerstones of behavioral economics, a model of intertemporal choice, basically boiling down to the idea that, given rewards that are perceived to be similarly valued, humans generally prefer ones that arrive earlier, rather than later, with the later reward always getting discounted. It seems rather obvious, but understanding the rationale helps to employ certain countermeasures, like retirement plans. Essentially, tying your hands in one time period to ensure payoff in the next. It’s a common consideration in finance, public policy…”</p><p>It is also sometimes applied to the behavior of an addict – study after study suggesting that more extreme delay discounting is a key behavioral process in drug dependence – but he doesn’t speak that part aloud. Not in so many words.</p><p>He sniffs and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes for just a moment, tries to swallow, but his mouth is so cotton dry and the kitchen is so far away.</p><p>Morgan eyes him carefully, concern clear on his face. “I’ve heard of it, yeah. It makes sense. Going somewhere with that?”</p><p>He was, but now he’s not so sure.</p><p>His third thought is <em>also</em> that this was a mistake.</p><p>He bites down on the inside of his cheek, wrings his hands, and looks off for a few long moments, lost for words.</p><p>“Reid?” Morgan’s voice is soft and considerate, and they might as well be on the jet back from some far-off city after some difficult case. <em>Use it to make you a better person.</em> “I know you didn’t call me tonight to talk about behavioral econ and stare at the back wall.”</p><p>His head is splitting and his heart is pounding and this was a mistake, but his hands are tied now. Morgan is looking at him like he just might break in half, and maybe he’s wrong, but maybe he’s right.</p><p>“What’s going on, man?”</p>
<hr/><p>The discharge forms sitting in front of him are itemized and detailed, but they just don’t look quite right.</p><p>“Excuse me, ma’am?” he says, pen in hand. “I think there’s a small mistake here. I was here for one night, not two.”</p><p>The night he came in, Gideon drove him to the hospital and Hotch helped half-carry him in and Garcia brought his bag so he could pack his dirty clothes that he’ll just end up throwing away later. The E.R. attending, a dark woman with curly hair and a picture-perfect southern accent, descended on him with some anticonvulsant, some fluids, and a boot on his foot, said something about reducing intracranial pressure, and gave him something to finally let him sleep.</p><p>He woke up itching to leave Georgia far, far behind him.</p><p>The nurse discharging him looks at him sweetly and reads it back aloud. He remembers what the page said, doesn’t need the refresher, but she doesn’t know that and it’s all fine enough.</p><p>“Alright, hon, so you came in on the seventh, just before midnight, right?” she starts and he nods along. “Right, and today’s the ninth. So two nights.” She smiles and turns it back to him.</p><p>“Today’s the –”</p><p>“You might not remember yesterday, but that’s alright. That happens sometimes.”</p><p>She says it’s <em>alright</em> like his brain isn’t supposed to remember absolutely everything it comes across, and it’s enough to make his stomach drop.</p><p>She follows by saying that apparently he slept through most of the second day, which doesn’t scare him quite as much, but also that he said absolutely nothing whenever he seemed to be awake.</p><p>“A few of your friends came by and sat with you, but they didn’t mind. You were just a little far away is all.”</p><p>Far away in a cabin on the edge of a cemetery, perhaps, the smell of burning fish still stuck on his skin. Or outside of it, with a shovel in his hands and rotting leaves clinging to his clothes, stars overhead shining all their pity down on him.</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>He is slowly nodding and signing his name when Gideon comes back to collect him, wheels up in forty-five, though he not-so-secretly hopes for thirty.</p>
<hr/><p>“I need help.”</p><p>It’s little more than a whisper, jaw set, a deep breath that doesn’t will the panic away as much as he hoped it would.</p><p>He runs his fingers through his hair, catching a few stray knots, and rests his head in his hands for a moment before looking back up.</p><p>Morgan meets his eyes and nods slowly.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah. I –” he breathes in, breathes out. “You—you know…”</p><p>“Might help to spell it out for me,” Morgan suggests, and he’s <em>right, </em>but that doesn’t make it any easier.</p><p>A breath, and Reid admits it. “I made a mistake. I thought—” There are tears in his eyes, threatening to fall. “—that if I could make it go away, it would be easier.”</p><p>“Too vague.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Be specific. That’s the rationale. What was the mistake, Reid?”</p><p>Silence stretches for forever between them, until Reid finally nods and says it out loud for the very first time: “I took the Dilaudid. And I… kept taking it.”</p><p>There are tear tracks snaking down his face, now, but he can’t look Morgan in the eye.</p><p>“At first it was just when I couldn’t… I couldn’t sleep, and then the—the flashbacks. But, uh…”</p><p>“It’s never just here and there, right?” Morgan supplies, and Reid nods.</p><p>“Right. I just… couldn’t stop.”</p><p>He couldn’t stop, at first because every time he tried, a new nightmare would crop up and he’d be back in the cemetery, digging his own grave, or seizing, choking, dying on a hard, wooden floor, or choosing innocent people to die, or saying Hotch’s name aloud and praying he hasn’t just sentenced a baby boy to live the rest of his life without his father.</p><p>Then it became more real.</p><p>“And now?” Morgan’s voice pulls him back.</p><p>He breathes in. He breathes out. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”</p><p>“I don’t want you to use, either.”</p><p>“I mean I don’t want to be broken anymore,” he clarifies, voice cracking in the soft light of the room, and the quiet between them is so very palpable.</p><p>“Reid—”</p><p>“You don’t have to say anything to that. It’s okay.” He knows what he is, even as Morgan sighs and looks him dead in the eye.</p><p>“I think you know damn well that it takes some people years to get over something like that,” he says, voice firm. “It takes people all that time, sober. It’s been seven months and if you’ve been getting high for, what? Six of those? You’re not going to just wake up and be over it. You know there’s no easy way through it. Got it?”</p><p>The younger man stares and stares until he finally nods his head – a hesitant concession.</p><p>Morgan lets out a pent up breath. “Okay. Good. Yeah, then, let’s, uh—throw it out, then.”</p><p>“I got rid of it this morning. There’s a drop-off spot in the precinct a few blocks down, got rid of everything.”</p><p> “Okay,” Morgan nods. “Good start. I’ll take your phone, then?”</p><p>“So I, uh— I snapped the SIM card,” he admits, a sheepish smile shining in the light. Contact or not, he can’t ever forget the number he’s been calling for months. “A replacement is coming in five to seven business days. I don’t think I’d use my work phone, but I can give you that anyway.”</p><p>He tosses it over.</p><p>“Two steps ahead, I see,” he smiles. “Maybe you don’t need me here after all.”</p><p>There’s a bit of a freeze, because there <em>is</em> a reason Reid called him, and it wasn’t simply to hold his work phone to keep him from dialing, keep him from walking out and spending the rest of his paycheck on replacing everything he threw away.</p><p>It’s also because he can’t forget the PIN to his own gun safe, even if he tried.</p>
<hr/><p>He is leaning against her desk when she finds him by accident.</p><p>Well, finding her desk was intentional. Finding Reid was unexpected. Or, rather, it might usually be expected at nine-fifteen, maybe, preceded by a gentle knock on the door before he sticks his head in and asks if she has a free moment, which she usually doesn’t, but she makes the time anyway.</p><p>There is less usual about him leaning against her desk at six forty-five, balancing a half-empty cup of coffee in one shaking, caffeinated hand and a case file in the other.</p><p>“Reid?”</p><p>He remembers how she hates coffee rings and mess, but also where she keeps case files she hasn’t finished digitizing and entering into the system just yet. It’s a wire paper tray on the edge of the desk, can’t miss it, but the files are usually in and out of it quickly because she is <em>nothing </em>if not efficient and excellent at her job.</p><p>There’s just one file she hasn’t brought herself to parse through just yet. It’s late, but who can blame her?</p><p>He jumps at the sudden sound and she very nearly hates herself for it.</p><p>“Garcia!” his voice cracks <em>just </em>a bit, and she does her best not to notice. The case file snaps shut. “Sorry, I assumed you were around somewhere, I should have waited, I just…”</p><p>He gestures a bit into space, taking care not to spill any coffee.</p><p>She offers a hesitant smile. “You probably also assumed I wouldn’t have handed that to you if you just walked in.”</p><p>An exhale through his nose, as close to laughter as this morning might get, but it’s still painfully, painfully early. The sun has barely started making its way into the bullpen outside.</p><p>“You’d be right,” she adds, “Still, it’s good to see you, Reid. Missed you around here.”</p><p>The absence of some colloquial nickname or familiar joke does not go unnoticed, but he smiles nonetheless. “I missed you, too.”</p><p>It has been two weeks and a single day since he walked out of a Georgia cemetery, one week and six since he came home on what still feels like borrowed time.</p><p>“I was just expecting you, you know – at the normal time. And not in my office unannounced with a… that case file.”</p><p>“I’ve yet to discover a normal time for this unit,” he clears his throat and places the file neatly back in its original spot, smooths his pants with his free hand. Takes a sip of coffee.</p><p>“Regarding the second part…” he looks back at the cover, back at his coffee, and finally, back at Garcia. His hands still shake in her peripherals. “I wanted to see what it said. I was curious.”</p><p>“And… what did it say?”</p><p>“Nothing remarkable,” he notes. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”</p><p>“Maybe it should?” she suggests, and he lets out a pent-up breath.</p><p>And he admits, “I don’t know. I don’t even know what it would say otherwise. We went to Georgia. Found an unsub. I shot the unsub.” A pause stretches out between them. A sip of coffee. “Case closed.”</p><p>After a few seconds, minutes, hours, days, Reid adds, “There were no pictures in the file, too, if that helps. Nothing much worse than any other case.”</p><p>She is quiet and careful as she takes a few steps toward him.</p><p>“I watched you die,” she says finally, tears welling up in her eyes in spite of herself. “Or I—I thought I was watching you die.”</p><p>He freezes for a moment, and if she listens hard, she might be able to hear how his breath shudders as he slowly nods.</p><p>“Yeah, there’s… I guess there’s that.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, I—”</p><p>“I was thinking, too,” Reid adds. Composure semi-regained. “That you, especially, see a lot less of this normally. Fewer of the grislier details. And that might make it that much worse when you do.”</p><p>A pause. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”</p><p>Garcia takes a moment to stare, sniffles quietly, and whispers: “I’m really glad you’re alive, Reid.”</p><p>“I am too.”</p><p>“Can I give you a hug?” she asks after a few long moments. “I know you don’t always –”</p><p>Before she can finish the thought, Reid offers her a muted smile and extends his free arm.</p>
<hr/><p>“That was a joke, by the way. You know I’m not leaving.”</p><p>Morgan smiles, but Reid is straight-faced and fidgeting.</p><p>There are few words he could use to explain how the first time he woke up screaming after Georgia, he woke with the echo of his own death rattling in the back of his mind, a single thought chilling him to the bone: that Tobias Hankel had started to kill him, and maybe in spite of everything, someone should finish the job.</p><p>He doesn’t want to die, but the sensation is a phantom limb.</p><p>The first time he tried to quit, a day and a half into the weekend, he snapped back from a hazy fever dream with his gun in his hand with the safety off and the hammer pulled back and no account of how it got there.</p><p>He doesn’t want to die, but he is well aware of the nasty little tricks the human mind can play.</p><p>He’s never needed much company before, but tonight it feels like a lifeline.</p><p>All he can do is nod at the floor.</p><p>“Reid, I’m glad you called me tonight.”</p><p>Pensive, deliberating silence.</p><p>“Reid?”</p><p>“Something I keep… coming back to,” Reid starts, eyes glassy and far away. He chooses his next words judiciously. “And I can’t quite answer. I don’t know why….”</p><p>A sigh.</p><p>“I don’t know why no one ever said anything.”</p><p>And for just a moment, Morgan has nothing to say in response.</p><p>Reid goes on. “I’m not—I mean, it’s no one’s fault but my own. I just… know that people know. It doesn’t make sense.”</p><p>The smallest flicker of hurt on his face would be easy to miss for anyone other than Morgan. He’s been reading the kid for years.</p><p>The older man takes a deep breath, considers the question. Slowly nods his head.</p><p>“Yeah,” Morgan says. “Yeah. With Hotch. you know if he ever knows anything and he doesn’t report it… he could lose his jobs. And then he can’t protect you from losing yours.”</p><p>His job was always more of a drug than the Dilaudid could ever be, but he considers the prospect: fired from the B.A.U., out of the F.B.I., onto something else. Elle, gone without a trace by the time their wheels touched back down in Virginia, springs to mind.</p><p>He’s never even <em>considered</em> doing anything else. Three PhDs, and this was the only way he could ever think to use them. And to think, his mother always told him he could be anything.</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>A natural next question. Morgan takes a breath.</p><p>“Would you have listened?” he asks, and Reid’s uncertainty is silent but plain on his face.</p><p>And Morgan admits: “I keep thinking about it, and I really don’t know if it was the right decision. I just…”</p><p>A sigh.</p><p>“Look, man, I’ve known… too many people. Too many that always went back to whatever it was, alcohol, a drug, an abusive boyfriend. I’ve sat down with friends, said everything you’re supposed to say on paper, and gotten cut off completely. I can’t help anyone if they don’t ever talk to me ever again.”</p><p>A beat. “My point is that sometimes you don’t realize until you realize. And the way you’d snap at Prentiss, I thought… you know, as much as I wanted to say something, I didn’t want us to lose out to a drug. Thought being there for you might be enough until you made the choice yourself.”</p><p>Reid stares at the floor.</p><p>“Like I said,” Morgan continues. “I don’t know if it was the right call. Hell, it probably wasn’t. And I’m sorry. But like I said – I’m really glad you called me tonight.”</p><p>After a few long moments, Reid finally looks up, jaw set, eyes shining in the dim light.</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>His voice breaks, but Morgan doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he stands up from the couch and stretches his legs.</p><p>“So <em>now</em>,” he says. “Not to make any decisions for you, but it’s two-thirty in the morning and you look like you’re about to pass out. Think it’s time we both went to sleep.”</p><p>Slowly, Reid nods and stands up on wobbly legs.</p><p>Morgan continues, “And barring any surprise cases this weekend, I’m thinking movies. Figure now’s my chance to get you watching something that isn’t <em>Star Trek</em> or whatever nerdy stuff you have here.”</p><p>A tired, pleasant smile. “Fine by me. And after that?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” he says. “Think you know that already. Just have to take it one day at a time, right? You might feel like shit today, and probably tomorrow, too. But next week, next month, next year? We’ll get there eventually."</p><p>“Right,” Reid echoes, turning the thought over and over. He nods. Trails off for a few seconds. “And Morgan?”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“When I called you earlier, there was no background noise. You sounded like you were home. You weren’t already up, were you?”</p><p>Morgan offers a tired smile in response. “What I do on my Friday nights, whether it’s sleeping or…” He glances around the room. “…anything else. My business, my man.”</p><p>And Reid smiles.</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p> </p>
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